JELLIES! Review

Play JELLIES! for five minutes and you'd be forgiven for being a little underwhelmed. It's a game that starts out slowly with a suggestion that it's a little too basic for anything hugely gripping. Fortunately, the more time spent with it, the better.

The idea is incredibly simple, of course: the screen is full of different colored jellies and you have to catch them by drawing lines to match them together. Essentially, it's like a Match-3 game but with moving targets adding to the sense of urgency. It's possible to encircle other jellies by creating a relevant path around them and that's where extra points and a certain layer of strategy comes into play.

This format stays mostly the same throughout the rest of the game. There are power-ups to use such as bombs, time extenders and an electroshock move, but ultimately it's the same game. What makes JELLIES! more enticing is its use of challenges and unlocks to make it feel like you're getting somewhere.

The challenges start out by introducing useful techniques for the game, but soon enough they also become a useful way of adding a sense of progression to the experience. Similarly, photos and other unlocks gradually appear the more you play. It's a neat touch and one that goes some way to ensuring that JELLIES! is more than just a shallow Match-3 game.

It's a little cheeky that, despite being a premium priced game, there are in-app purchases to help things along, but the game is reasonably generous without those. For $0.99 or a matter of inviting Facebook friends along, an Endless mode can be unlocked, which is pretty nice.

Despite those incredibly shallow early moments, JELLIES! is worthy of your attention. It's simple but quite beguiling at times, all thanks to those crucial challenges.